


Nature and Nurture

by Eatgreass



Category: Batgirl (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, abuse mention, we love the batgirls here!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26301379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: Cassandra Cain was a girl pushed into a life too early.Stephanie Brown had to fight for everything she got.Barbara Gordon was going to help people, fighting tooth and nail.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain & Barbara Gordon
Kudos: 7





	Nature and Nurture

The oracle Cassandra was doomed to not be believed. Forced to be silent in a world where she knew how to help but could not tell those she loved. She watched the world flood, unable to do anything.

The brother Cain was the first murderer.

Cassandra Cain was just a girl pushed into a life too early, forced to be something she shouldn’t have been, something she wasn’t proud of. 

In another world, she supposed, she could be something else. In another world, she supposed, she hadn’t been caught up with Cain’s and Cassandra’s, Oracles and Murderers.

There is not a world where Cassandra Cain chooses not to be good. 

There is a world where she was born into one of the richest families in Gotham, where she rose above her class with a vicious smile and cutting barbs, and then dismantled the family empire brick by brick, watching it fall as she built herself higher, because nobody should be treated like her family treated the children of Gotham. 

There is a world where Cassandra was a child of Gotham, and she used her wide eyes and pursed lips to give food to those younger than her, a world where she built the pain on the street back into buildings, and made a difference, no matter how small.

There is a world where three year old Cassandra Cain sat shivering in a cardboard box on the streets, and died the next morning in that box. 

There is not a world where she decided to use her pain to justify the hurt of others. There is not a spiteful Cassandra Cain. 

This Cassandra Cain, the one that was told to kill from the age of nine, who was the perfect weapon, who was never meant to be more than a moving butcher knife, has had the hardest life of all. Pain is not a competition, but when you look at the multiverse, and see the figures she could have become in infinite circumstances, you do not expect nature to prevail over her childhood.

And yet.

And yet, this broken, beaten, pained girl sitting on a windowsill, confident in her ability to balance, stayed  _ good.  _

\---

Stephanie Brown had to fight for everything she got. She said a word wrong and was in a closet for hours, and if she didn’t buy the food, and cook the dinner, it wouldn’t be there.

She fought to become Spoiler, sewing the costume and buying the fabric, and standing up to  _ Batman  _ himself. (The mask was a good idea. He couldn’t see her tears, and she was adept at concealing her voice.)

She fought for her child, a kid she never got to see and who was growing up somewhere in the slums of Gotham.

She fought to become Robin, and g-d damn it, she was Robin, and it was  _ real. _

Street rat with her heavy Gotham accent and ratty sweatshirt with blood under her fingernails, she stuck out like a sore thumb. 

But fuck it, no matter  _ what  _ Vicki Vale said, she was going to speak up and do what she could to be. Not be more. Not rise above her birth. Her birth was fine. She wasn’t ashamed of her mother, and she wasn’t her father and damn anybody who told her she was a Gotham street rat, because she had more steel and spine than anybody who went to Gotham academy, and she wasn’t afraid to say it.

Doctor brown. 

Not doctor like doctor Quinzel, or Doctor Crane, or Doctor Frieze, but doctor like Thompkins. 

She was going to help people, and she’d built her way up from the streets so she could make sure nobody else lived like she lived. 

There was a lot of work to do, but Stephanie had time, she had an apartment, she had a life, and she was prepared.

\---

It took Barbara Gordon until she was twenty one to realize why her father didn’t want her to be a cop. 

He was the best man she knew in the world, the most righteous, the most honest, and he  _ helped  _ people. But when Barbara tried to put a sticker showing her support for the Gotham PD on the back of her car, Jim Gordon, her  _ father,  _ took hold of her wrist, and with tired eyes, told her it wasn’t right.

It took her four more years to see the corruption her father couldn’t combat. 

She became Batgirl shortly after that, determined to help people, and to do the right thing, and to create a positive impact in the world. 

Through the tired eyes of her father, she saw pride, and that gave her the drive to continue, knowing she was doing more good as a librarian and vigilante than she could ever do as a cop. 

Even if she was only able to save one person, a broken girl that needed a sister, it was helping.

Even if she wasn’t going to fly again, she was going to show a scared child where to go for help, and she was going to help another child graduate, and she was going to create the world of privilege she had. 

When Barbara got shot, she was pissed. Pissed off that she wasn’t even being shot because of something  _ batgirl  _ did. No. Everything that happened to her, all the trauma was just to hurt her father. 

He was worried she’d miss being batgirl. She missed her early morning runs more.

She did more good as Oracle, anyway, and she gave her suit to Cassandra Cain, a girl who needed it more than her. 

Barbara was going to help people, fighting tooth and nail, even if it took her years to find the right way of helping.


End file.
